Zombie Book Review: Dead Tropics

Dead Tropics is a must read for anyone who has had enough of the classic zombie survival story, how is Sue Edge’s book any different? Well.. the hero is a she to begin with. Okay, female characters are nothing new in the genre but a single mother of three who finds in her the strength to save her family and face the undead plague is really something unusual and refreshing.

Another original and daring aspect of the story is that it features kids. Not the usual rebel teenagers that will have you spending your time trying to figure out where the hell they went wrong as babies. It’s a no brainer that the ZA and toddlers don’t match, it’s something that any parent will feel deep inside its guts – it just puts you immediately on the edge. Another thing that I really enjoyed is that for once the story does not take place in the US but in Cairns, Australia. The sea, the rainforest and a city in between… mmh, I want to go!

I’m sure Sue must have cursed AMC for making a such an annoying character out of Rick’s wife Lori because quite coincidentally the heroine of Dead Tropics is also named Lori, but the comparison stops there as our heroine as more in common with Sarah Connor than with the whining and manipulative character we’ve discovered in the TV show. As much as I like to believe a mother is capable of anything to save her kids I must however admit that I think Sue raised the bar a bit high though. Dead Tropics is a 240 pages condensate of pure hell juice, nothing is going to be spared to these poor folks. Lori is running from the first to the last page.. to the point that I started telling myself that she had to be on drugs to keep up. But no, it’s just the love of her kids, and the charms of her sidekick.

That’s right in the middle of the apocalypse our supermom will find the time to fall in love, isn’t that just great? All right, I’m being a bit unfair here and that’s probably because I’m not really the targeted reader. Dead Tropics is a book written by a woman essentially for other woman. At some point in the story I had to take a break because I was rolling my eyes at some girlie stuff that I just could not see as legitimate in a survival story. So I had a chat with my better half and after laying her the context I told her that I found ridiculous that a chick could find the time to phantasm about the guy standing next to her while they hide from flesh eating monsters. Well, I was deeply mistaken it seems because she found that to be completely rational – so, 1 point for Sue here.

Overall I think this book is a total win, the only thing I would consider to be a bit over the top is the amount of challenges our survivors had to face; it is non-stop running, and I think the story could have used some pauses here and there in order to allow building a bit of tension and also make the characters a bit more credible.

Well.. try to picture the skate park filled with flesh eating monsters!
More seriously, featuring kids in such a story is a bold move and it’s a topic that I’d love to go into further details with the author.

I have to confess, there’s a lot of Lori in me. Her ‘voice’ is my voice. Her kids are my kids (much to their disgust). But she’s probably a lot more coordinated and fitter than me. Not sure I could aim well enough to stake anyone through the eye 🙂